第64章 LETTER XI(4)

"These twenty-four hours picking our way through ice.""August 1st.--Wind W.--courses variable--foggy--continually among ice these twenty-four hours."And in Fitz's diary,the discouraging state of the weather is still more pithily expressed:--"August 2nd.--Head wind--sailing westward--large hummocks of ice ahead,and on port bow,i.e.to the westward--hope we may be able to push through.In evening,ice gets thicker;we still hold on--fog comes on--ice getting thicker--wind freshens--we can get no farther--ice impass-able,no room to tack--struck the ice several times--obliged to sail S.and W.--things look very shady."Sometimes we were on the point of despairing altogether,then a plausible opening would show itself as if leading towards the land,and we would be tempted to run down it until we found the field become so closely packed,that it was with great difficulty we could get the vessel round,--and only then at the expense of collisions,which made the little craft shiver from stem to stern.Then a fog would come on--so thick,you could almost cut it like a cheese,and thus render the sailing among the loose ice very critical indeed then it would fall dead calm,and leave us,hours together,muffled in mist,with no other employment than chess or hopscotch.It was during one of those intervals of quiet that I executed the annexed work of art,which is intended to represent Sigurdr,in the act of meditating a complicated gambit for the Doctor's benefit.

About this period Wilson culminated.Ever since leaving Bear Island he had been keeping a carnival of grief in the pantry,until the cook became almost half-witted by reason of his Jeremiads.Yet I must not give you the impression that the poor fellow was the least wanting in PLUCK--far from it.Surely it requires the highest order of courage to anticipate every species of disaster every moment of the day,and yet to meet the impending fate like a man--as he did.Was it his fault that fate was not equally ready to meet him?HIS share of the business was always done:he was ever prepared for the worst;but the most critical circumstances never disturbed the gravity of his carriage,and the fact of our being destined to go to the bottom before tea-time would not have caused him to lay out the dinner-table a whit less symmetrically.

Still,I own,the style of his service was slightly depressing.He laid out my clean shirt of a morning as if it had been a shroud;and cleaned my boots as though for a man ON HIS LAST LEGS.The fact is,he was imaginative and atrabilious,--contemplating life through a medium of the colour of his own complexion.

This was the cheerful kind of report he used invariably to bring me of a morning.Coming to the side of my cot with the air of a man announcing the stroke of doomsday,he used to say,or rather,TOLL--"Seven o'clock,my Lord!"

"Very well;how's the wind?"

"Dead ahead,my Lord--DEAD!"

"How many points is she off her course?"

"Four points,my Lord--full four points!"(Four points being as much as she could be.)"Is it pretty clear?eh!Wilson?"

"--Can't see your hand,my Lord!--can't see your hand!""Much ice in sight?"

"--Ice all round,my Lord--ice a-all ro-ound!"--and so exit,sighing deeply over my trousers.

Yet it was immediately after one of these unpromising announcements,that for the first time matters began to look a little brighter.The preceding four-and-twenty hours we had remained enveloped in a cold and dismal fog.

But on coming on deck,I found the sky had already begun to clear;and although there was ice as far as the eye could see on either side of us,in front a narrow passage showed itself across a patch of loose ice into what seemed a freer sea beyond.The only consideration was--whether we could be certain of finding our way out again,should it turn out that the open water we saw was only a basin without any exit in any other direction.The chance was too tempting to throw away;so the little schooner gallantly pushed her way through the intervening neck of ice where the floes seemed to be least huddled up together,and in half an hour afterwards found herself running up along the edge of the starboard ice,almost in a due northerly direction.And here I must take occasion to say that,during the whole of this rather anxious time,my master--Mr.Wyse--conducted himself in a most admirable manner.Vigilant,cool,and attentive,he handled the vessel most skilfully,and never seemed to lose his presence of mind in any emergency.It is true the silk tartan still coruscated on Sabbaths,but its brilliant hues were quite a relief to the colourless scenes which surrounded us,and the dangling chain now only served to remind me of what firm dependence I could place upon its wearer.